Mood. It is an essential component of daily life and creative practice for artists. Designers make mood boards. Critics comment on the mood of a designer’s collection. A musician’s interpretation of a piece of music can shift the mood in the room. Some days we are just not in the mood to do anything. Moods are important and sometimes difficult to express.
Enter San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and its fantastic initiative “Send Me SF MOMA”. This interactive project gives you instant on-demand access to the museum’s entire catalogue. You can access its treasure vaults in a very fun way that provides you with deeply personal experience. Stuck in a deadlines rut? Craving that je ne sais quoi? Can’t quite put your proverbial finger on a moment? Now, there is an artwork for that! Text the number 572-51 with the words “send me” and any adjective, keyword, color or even an emoji to receive a related captioned image as a text-back.
Jay Mollica is SFMOMA’s creative technologist explains the algorithm: “For example, ‘send me the ocean’ might get you Pirkle Jones’ Breaking Wave, Golden Gate; ‘send me something blue’ could result in Éponge (SE180) by Yves Klein; and ‘send me [bouquet emoji]’ might return Yasumasa Morimura’s An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (Collar of Thorns). Each text message triggers a query to the SFMOMA collection API, which responds with an artwork matching your request.”
Try it out and let us know on social media what you think! Writing this post got me like… “Chris Johanson, Untitled, 2013, acrylic on paper, 18 x 24 in.”
Text by Alexey Timbul
Feature Image: Henrik Kam for SFMoMA
